'Mad Dads' of Omaha Take On Gangs and Drugs

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John Foster decided that something new needed to be done here to combat drugs and violence after his son, a 20-year-old college student, was beaten up last year by youths who thought he belonged to a rival gang.

Mr. Foster, who is 46 years old, and his son set out to find the attackers, but they could not. Now, he says, he is glad they failed. ''Every time I think about that, it frightens me because I had killing in my eyes,'' Mr. Foster said. ''As I sat there in my car with my son, it hit me - I'm a mad dad.''

From that insight came the birth of the group that President Bush visited here Friday in a neighborhood noted for its gang violence and crack trade.

Speaking to about 2,500 people, Mr. Bush singled out Mr. Foster for praise. The President said that when Mr. Foster went out with his son ''he found that the streets belonged not to families but to gangs, not to hope but to drug dealers, not to a bright future but to a brutal cycle of violence and crime.''

''And John Foster found a voice within him to shout, 'This madness must stop.' '' Mr. Bush said.

The group Mad Dads (the name is an acronym for Men Against Destruction/ Defending Against Drugs and Social-Disorder), was set up to provide role models for black youths and to provide a positive presence on the streets ravaged by violence and crack in this Midwestern city of 350,000.

In the last year, Mad Dads has grown to a biracial 600-member organization in Omaha and has added chapters in Denver and Grand Island, Neb. Discussions about setting up chapters are taking place in other cities, including Houston, Columbus, Ohio, Charlotte, N.C., Chicago and Miami.

In April, the White House honored the group with one of its ''1,000 Points of Light'' awards for voluntarism.

For help in forming Mad Dads, Mr. Foster called Eddie Staton, a father of six and the former human relations director for the City of Omaha, . They said they were looking for ''50 strong men.''

''Look, not all black males are pimps and drug dealers and hypersexual individuals making babies and not caring,'' said Mr. Staton, the group's president. ''There would be strong men who work hard and care about their families.''

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Mad Dads made an immediate and visible impact last summer when its members took to the streets to paint over gang-related graffiti near the public housing projects and warned the gang members that they would not allow graffiti in the neighborhood. Members of Mad Dads were on the streets last summer at midnight in areas of Omaha where black youths gathered and drugs were often sold.

Mr. Staton said, ''I got a much better understanding of what was really going on when I took off the three-piece suit I had worn in City Hall and got down into the streets in the middle of the night.'' In his view, too many well-meaning groups spend their time at meetings and dinners in business suits instead of getting to know people who are the victims of the problems.

Police Suspicion Overcome

To compete against the drug dealers with their trendy clothes and hot cars, Mr. Staton said, Mad Dads conducted themselves in ''quality ways.'' On the streets, Mad Dads wear silky black jackets with a stylized logo of a clenched fist superimposed on an outstretched hand.

Members of the Omaha police force's gang unit were at first suspicious of Mad Dads, fearful they were a publicity-seeking vigilante group that would get in the way of officers. But the action of the fathers has largely overcome the police suspicion.

And the name Mad Dads angered MADD, Mothers Against Drunk Driving, which filed a Federal suit against the group, accusing it of violating the MADD trademark. The suit is pending in Federal District Court here.

Mr. Bush's appearance with Mad Dads ''lends credibility to us in our city and across the nation,'' Mr. Staton said.

''We've captured the imaginations of the kids,'' Mr. Staton said. ''Now they want to be Mad Dads. We did it with love and caring.''

A version of this article appears in print on June 10, 1990, on Page 1001025 of the National edition with the headline: 'Mad Dads' of Omaha Take On Gangs and Drugs. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe